Descending into obscurity, bereft of leadership, and driven to distraction by Obama’s cool, the fading Republican Party has opened yet another can of crackpot and let it pour over the religiously bewitched and acutely ignorant leftovers of nasty Nixonism, regressive Reaganism and bumbling Bushism.

Joining the cranky ranks of Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Mike Pence, John Boehner and all of the other daft neocons needing professional help, the new can in question is boiling-over-the-top-crazy Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who barely won reelection in 2008 over an obscure Tolkien character named, no kidding, Elwyn Tinklenberg. No offense to poor old Elwyn, but Tinklenberg is a politician like Limbaugh is a neurosurgeon.

Bachmann’s fringe-right dementedness is nothing new for her, as the excellent Dump Bachmann blog has archived, just not yet exposed to a national audience. In fact, Michele’s been in the forefront of every extreme Christopublican-corporatist nutcase movement since she was in the MN state legislature. In her Jesuitic devotion to the poor, she vehemently opposed any increase in the minimum wage, saying in January of 2005: “Literally, if we took away the minimum wage we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would able to offer jobs at whatever level.” (No doubt she did not mean this to include Minnesota Congresswomen, nor any member of their immediate families.)

She has also been a stern Old Testament foe of all things gay, as this quote from a 2004 interview on a Minnesota radio program called “Prophetic Views Behind The News” highlights: This is a very serious matter [homosexuality], because it is our children who are the prize for this community, they are specifically targeting our children.” (The gay is comin’ ta get ya!)

But just so the reader doesn’t think this might have been a singular anti-gay eruption elicited by one too many cocktails, there are also these tidbits from something called the ‘EdWatch National Education Conference’ in November 2004: “If youre involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, its bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement.” (As opposed to the bondage, despair and enslavement to corporate kindness caused by the lack of a minimum wage.) At the same venue, she took the hatchet to companies that neglected to contribute to her campaign fund, “They arent just kind of gay-friendly, they are gay advocates at Proctor and Gamble Heres just a few other companies that support the pro-homosexual agenda. They include Levi-Strauss, American Airlines, Sara Lee Bakery, Jaguar and Land Rover.” (“Sara Lee Their Delicious Cakes Will Make You Gay!”)